Death! with Becky Robison

How do we do what we have to do at the worst possible moment? Death correspondent Becky Robison, the author of My Parents Are Dead: What Now? A Panic-Free Guide to the Practicalities of Death, tells Sarah about the most potent myths around the funeral industry and the many difficult choices that can follow profound loss. From what to do with a loved one’s body, to the confusing costs that follow, to final celebrations of life, Becky uses her personal experience as well as her research to present a guide for navigating the odd intersection of grief and bureaucracy. More Becky Robison: https://www.deadparentswhatnow.com/ Produced + edited by Miranda Zickler: http://www.linktr.ee/mirandatheswampmonster Resources: ⁠Home Funeral Alliance⁠ ⁠Funeral Consumers Alliance⁠ ⁠Green Burial Council⁠ More You're Wrong About: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bonus Episodes on Patreon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy cute merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YWA on Instagram⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sarah Marshall?

  Or sometimes it is nice to have these things happen when you're dissociating because there'll be cold cuts.

• 0:16Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall, and today we are joined by Becky Robinson, author of the book, My Parents Are Dead: What Now? A Panic-Free Guide to the Practicalities of Death. And boy, did I have questions for her. This is a very practical and also, I think, a really lovely episode, and I'm so happy to share it with you and want to thank Becky for answering so many questions and also so many more in her book. But dearly beloved, we are gathered here today because I have to ask you something, which is to submit some audio for our holiday special this year. We have a deadline of November

• 0:57Sarah Marshall?

  15th. I'm sorry it's so soon. I should have mentioned that deadline sooner. It's my fault. I'm so sorry. But it's the 15th. We will not be the most strict about it if you get it in a couple of days late. But that is when we need to have them by so we can make you a holiday episode, much like the one we did for you last year, if you want to listen for inspiration, or if you haven't heard it yet. It's called Where I Live. And it's listeners of this show telling us where they are in the world and what it's like, what it sounds like, what it feels like, who they love, what they love about it, what they love to hate, what we are wrong about it. I'm from Portland, and I talked last year about how I love that people who have fruit trees in their yards or gardens that

• 1:42Sarah Marshall?

  are being really productive will give out free fruit and have signs specifying that they really want people to take fruit from their trees. And that's not a stereotype people have about us, but it's something I see a lot around town, and that helps me when I'm out on a walk. And this year, I wanted to tell another story. And what came to mind is that when my mom first moved to Oregon from Iowa in the 70s, she was on a nature trail, and she thought that someone from the Parks Department went around dumping pine needles everywhere to give it that pine needly look. It didn't occur to her that they were just naturally occurring and falling from the trees, but they were. That's me and my mom. We love Oregon. Where do you live? Where are you from? Where are you missing?

• 2:25Sarah Marshall?

  Where do you want to be? Where are you learning to love? We want to hear about it. So send us about three minutes or less of a voice memo telling us about where you live or letting us hear where you live and send it to [email protected]. [email protected]. And we really can't wait to hear from you, and we're so excited to make this episode. Listen to the one from last year. I love it. It'll make you cry if you're in the mood for that. Okay. If you want bonus content, or if you like our ocean correspondent, Branda

• 3:08Sarah Marshall?

  Bowman, I know I sure do, we have a new bonus episode with her where she gives me a quiz about the ocean and everybody who lives in it. And I did, I might have passed. I hope I passed. We'll see. Otherwise, I'll have to go to Ocean Summer School, but that could be good. You can find bonus content on Patreon and Apple Plus and also on Spotify. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here, doing your best, as we all are, to deal with the daylight moving around. I just don't know where it goes. Here's your episode.

• 3:47Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where sometimes we talk about death, the most glamorous maligned woman of them all. And with me today is, hmm, death expert Becky Robinson.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Accidental.

• 4:06Sarah Marshall?

  Will you take that? Accidental death expert. I like that.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  Yes, that's often how I describe myself. Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. I'm really excited to be here, talking to you about my favorite maligned woman, death.

• 4:19Sarah Marshall?

  Thank you so much for letting me have you here. And tell us about your book.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my book is called My Parents Are Dead: What Now? A Panic-Free Guide to the Practicalities of Death. It came out in January of this year. As you might have guessed from the title, my parents died. And after they died, I ended up being in charge of all the post-death logistics. And I suddenly realized that there was nobody there to tell me how to do that. So I, of course, decided that I had to solve this problem for myself and everyone else, apparently. So I created a website called deadparentswhatnow.com, and then it ended up being a book.

• 4:58Sarah Marshall?

  Truly the best book title that I think I've ever heard.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Thank you. We really waffled back and forth on that subtitle. We went, we went, we went a lot of directions, but I think panic-free won the day.

• 5:10Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, panic-free is good. It's a little bit Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  It is. I do wish I could give everybody, you know, like a comforting towel, but instead, you can just have this book.

• 5:21Sarah Marshall?

  Or a small packet of cornflakes. I mean, I guess that is kind of a good metaphor. I just reread that book, and by read, I mean, listened to the audiobook read by Stephen Fry.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Oh, that would be the perfect narrator for that.

• 5:34Sarah Marshall?

  Right. But I do feel like this metaphor makes sense to me in the sense that I've had one parent die. I have my other parent still around, and I am unable to imagine, even having lost one, the feeling of losing another, the other one, since many of us only have two, which seems like too few parents to have.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was just three, it was three years apart. It was not easy, especially because when something big like this happens, and you have a lot of logistical money and legal stuff to do, the first thing that I would normally do in that scenario is ask my parents, but I couldn't because they were dead.

• 6:19Sarah Marshall?

  The very thing that you're not used to, you know, of not having them around.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. So I mean, I don't want to suggest I had no support. My aunts and uncles, of course, tried to be helpful. My friends' parents were amazing. You know, they were all, I had, I was surrounded by, you know, substitute parents trying to help me through it, but for various reasons, either because they hadn't done it in a long time, or they, you know, I feel like there's a pretty big financial difference between boomers and millennials. So I think a lot of them had just kind of hired a lawyer to tackle it all. And so they didn't really know a lot of the details. Yeah, they just were trying to help me, but couldn't help me perhaps as much as they wanted. And then, of course, I turned to the internet, and the information was kind of scattered all over the place. So I decided that I should just put it all in one place.

• 7:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And I mean, what questions do you find people tend to have? What came up for you in this situation?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, there were so many things. I mean, I can turn to our myths that I put together, but I mean, there were just so many questions. And today, we're going to focus on mainly the funeral industry, because when we say you're wrong about death, that could pertain to so many different things, from probate court to selling a house to all of this stuff. But the first thing you have to do after a parent dies is plan a funeral, which is basically like planning a huge sad wedding in a very short span of time. So yeah, it's just, it's really hard. You're very sad. You don't know exactly how you're going to pay for all of this stuff. And suddenly, you have to figure out how

• 7:55Speaker 01

  to dispose of a body and plan a memorial for it. So it's a lot of work. And I figured we could talk about how to navigate the funeral industry without losing your mind, or perhaps all of your money, too.

• 8:07Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm, I like that. Right. Because of course, also, it's, you know, when you're under emotional duress is a great time to be making a million decisions about money. I feel like is what a lot of what you're referencing has in common, which, you know, one of the great themes of this show.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Right. Yes, it was capitalism all along, also pertains to the funeral industry, unfortunately.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm not saying that necessarily all funeral homes are trying to scam you. That's not what I'm saying. It's just that when you are very sad, you are not in the best place to be making large financial decisions. And so it seems, actually, this is myth number one that I wrote down if we're, you know, doing funeral myth busting.

• 8:51Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, if we don't want to be mistaken.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  No, if, oh god, I love it. I love it. Mistaken.

• 8:57Sarah Marshall?

  I stole that from Buffy. I didn't come up with that.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Well, it's a good steal. It's an excellent, excellent pun.

• 9:03Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I've only been waiting to use that for about like 15 years.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Well, it's an, it's an honor that you used it with me. I really appreciate it.

• 9:10Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, this is the moment.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so myth number one is that a funeral costs what it costs. So I should just do what the funeral home says. That makes sense. You're sad. It's their whole job to like sell you a funeral, right? And they even do sell it.

• 9:24Sarah Marshall?

  By the same token, the lobster is market price.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Right, right. That's the problem. And they are going to try to sell you things in packages, for instance. So it seems like, oh, you just pick a package and go. No, no, it is gross to think of yourself this way. But when you are shopping for a funeral, you are in fact a consumer. And you have consumer rights under the Federal Trade Commission's funeral rule.

• 9:48Sarah Marshall?

  And we might as well use them before RFK gets rid of them one day in a fit of pique.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. I feel like he definitely could. Have you ever heard of the funeral rule?

• 9:57Sarah Marshall?

  I have not. Um, please tell me what it is. Tell all of us.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  I think the funeral rule has a really interesting history. So it only came about in 1984. So that's the first time we had really any real regulation in terms of federal regulation of the funeral industry. So this came after years and years of consumer complaints.

• 10:20Sarah Marshall?

  Because the slogan of the American legal system is why bother? But like in Latin.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically. But yeah, so this came after years of consumer complaints and congressional hearings. And one of the big things that spawned the discussion was Jessica Mitford's 1963 book, The American Way of Death. And I know you've heard of Jessica Mitford.

• 10:39Sarah Marshall?

  Of course.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  One of the finest muckrakers of our day.

• 10:42Sarah Marshall?

  One of the finest Mitford sisters.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yes, one, easily one of the best Mitford sisters, considering, you know, several of them were literal Nazis, but.

• 10:50Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, that too.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was not. She was like decidedly the opposite of a Nazi. And she wrote originally an investigative journalism piece that later became her book, The American Way of Death. And it, it sort of created this outpouring from the public after they read this of like, oh, yes, I also was taken advantage of this funeral home, or I felt like I was charged more than I had to. So that eventually led to, you know, from the consumer complaints, we get congressional hearings. And that finally, years later, in 1984, we get the funeral rule. And it has changed very little since 1984. It was last amended in 1994, and that's the last time it was updated. So it prescribes a lot of, basically your consumer rights, like the things that you are entitled to

• 11:37Speaker 01

  when working with a funeral home, so that they can't overcharge you or take advantage of you in your grieving state. So one of the biggest things they have to do is provide price information over the phone or in person. So if you call them, they have to give you a general price list. Or if you come in person, they have to give you a general price list. However, they don't have to do that online.

• 12:01Sarah Marshall?

  Which I think shows bias against millennials and Gen Z and therefore, you know, shows a lack of equal protection under the law.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree, quite frankly.

• 12:12Sarah Marshall?

  Right? And we're going to take this all the way to the Supreme Court.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Well, this is one of the things that they almost recently changed in the funeral rule. A few years ago, the FTC was having hearings to decide whether they should force funeral homes to put those general price lists online. But because the Federal Trade Commission members kind of changed depending on the administration, right now, we have the Trump administration. So that kind of fell by the wayside. And now they are not forced to put that information online.

• 12:42Sarah Marshall?

  Sometimes federal legislation feels like this game of pong, where like in the time it takes for one administration to get a bill going, it like gets batted down when the next one is sworn in and then nothing ever happens. Except that for some reason, bad ideas are like easier to bring to effect. For, I, I guess because if you don't care about ethics or anything, it's easier to get things done. I don't know. It's disheartening.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  It is disheartening. And I agree with you. I feel like, you know, I was born in 1988. And I feel like throughout my lifetime, uh, it's like, I can name very few things where I'm like, Congress got that done. I'm like Obamacare.

• 13:32Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  That's one thing, I guess.

• 13:34Sarah Marshall?

  That's one thing. And then, uh, well, look, I mean, I'm not exactly a congressional scholar, but.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 13:42Sarah Marshall?

  Nothing's coming to mind.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's the big one that I can think of.

• 13:47Sarah Marshall?

  In fact, as far as I can tell, it's your job as a congressperson to demonstrate how small of an amount of power it's possible to get drunk on, like in some kind of ongoing experiment.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, you know, it certainly does seem like that where I live here in Kentucky, because we've got Mitch McConnell. So that's been.

• 14:06Sarah Marshall?

  What's, is he dead? Is he? I know he's not dead, dud, but like, what do you think is going on right now?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  You know, since I trained as a death doula while writing this book, people have asked me that question a lot. And I, uh, I don't think he's dead, but I certainly think, I mean, I certainly think it's a case of elder abuse. I just think that he.

• 14:27Sarah Marshall?

  Frankie Valli.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  It's like elder abuse that he wants. It's like, this is like his dream.

• 14:34Sarah Marshall?

  It's like a phantom threat.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. It's like, please use my corpse to keep power for as long as possible.

• 14:41Sarah Marshall?

  Well, they should give him a new job as, as the crypt keeper and then he can, you know, vacate his seat. He can go to Hollywood and be moved around by a set of wires.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Well, you know, what's also fun is that even if, even if he had resigned, the Kentucky State Legislature, which is, you know, Republican, passed a law so that our Democratic governor can't even appoint his replacement, like in almost every other state. So.

• 15:08Sarah Marshall?

  But?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  So, yeah, or it's like, it's either that or that he has to appoint a Republican because a Republican was leaving. So it's like, yeah, it's, it's really, it's really great. So it really doesn't matter, quite frankly.

• 15:20Sarah Marshall?

  See, this is the thing, right? Is that like so many things that are happening today that would have been utterly shocking 10 years ago were like, meh, so it goes. Am I right?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it is. Uh, we are living in hell. That's true. And we've all gotten used to it, which is distressing, but.

• 15:38Sarah Marshall?

  And we're getting more used to stuff every day. And I do think that like having the potential to be shocked, like, don't fault yourself for being naive. I would cling to every shred of naivety you can manage to find at this point.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Okay, wait, so here's like possibly good news, maybe, is that I do think that funeral homes are going to have to start putting their prices online, not because of the funeral rule, but just because of consumer preference. Like, if you look at the industry's own statistics, which they publish every year, like the National Funeral Directors Association, it's clear that people prefer to shop online.

• 16:18Sarah Marshall?

  Right. They can't expect to endorse a brick and mortar industry. They don't get to do that. And they need to have an app.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, well, yeah. Um, they should have an app, I guess. They, they should at least, at the very least, put their prices online.

• 16:34Sarah Marshall?

  You should be able to doordash a casket.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Okay, Sarah, that's myth number two, but actually you can.

• 16:40Sarah Marshall?

  But you can, you can doordash a casket.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. So myth, myth number two, if we're going to jump there, is that I have to buy a casket or an urn from the funeral home. No, no, not according to the FTC funeral rule. You can buy a casket or an urn anywhere and have it shipped to the funeral home, and they have to accept it.

• 16:59Sarah Marshall?

  There's this class where you can build a bookcase. You probably know where this is going. You've probably heard this one.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  And then it becomes a casket.

• 17:09Sarah Marshall?

  Yes, and then it becomes your casket. And I guess really, I'm very into the whole memento mori thing. So I've always liked that idea, but I just, you know, haven't had time to do the bookcase thing.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  No, absolutely. You can do that. And if you're into pottery and you like go to your pottery class and you make like a weird funky shaped little vase or whatever, you can use that as an urn. You can use a cookie jar as an urn. You can use a mason jar that you got at the craft store.

• 17:36Sarah Marshall?

  This does solve one of the problems brought up by the big Lebowski, which is what do you do when they try to upsell you to like, you know, when the most basic urn is too expensive? And you are but a stoner and a Vietnam vet.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:52Sarah Marshall?

  And I mean, it's nice to have something more festive than a coffee can, but.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 17:57Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  It is. I mean, and it really is like that. Like when we, when my mom died, you know, my dad was handling a lot of the financial stuff and my sister and I were helping because we were adults. But, you know, essentially we bought an $800 urn from the funeral home for my mom. Um, it's a very nice urn. It's pretty, but like.

• 18:15Sarah Marshall?

  But that's wild.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  It's just an urn. Yeah.

• 18:18Sarah Marshall?

  That sounds like, you know, the stories of you when you get a receipt from the hospital and they're like, one Band-Aid, $399. And you're like, oh my god.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's also a good point is that they also have to give you an itemized price list of what you're buying at the funeral home before you make your purchase so that you can see exactly what you're purchasing. So you don't buy anything you don't want to buy.

• 18:42Sarah Marshall?

  What do you think about the ethics of the funeral industry, which I realize are changing and improving, but about sort of what we've been dealing with and what Jessica Mitford was muckraking about?

• 18:53Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I have mixed feelings. I know some funeral directors who are very forward thinking and very cool and who are like working to solve these problems. And then there are a lot of big funeral homes that just, you know, don't really care about that stuff.

• 19:07Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Just like how, you know, medicine is an important, ridiculous to call it just important, like an essential and amazing and

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, like literally crucial for people to live a lot of the time.

• 19:22Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Like I'm running out of language. It's like, right. Like we have to pursue medicine with everything that we have. And like, we're, we're so lucky that people give their lives to it. And also the ways that we executed in this country, like it makes sense that people become disillusioned by it and want to believe that they can save themselves by eating berries, you know, because of the ways that we have turned it into a profit driven industry that frequently operates at cross purposes to its ideals.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's like your, your antidepressant is so expensive that you're like, well, yeah, maybe I can survive on just these like weird grifter scams.

• 19:59Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Or you're anti psychotic for that matter.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:03Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. You're like, well, I guess I can't afford to live. And, you know, and that that's a real problem in this country. Like the disillusionment makes sense. And I guess, you know, with looking at the funeral industry, it's like, it makes sense that it's, it's complex and there's kind of a mosaic out there, but that you can see perhaps a history of people doing what they can get away with in a way that to me, looking at it personally seems particularly icky, thinking about the, the goal seeming to be, you know, when someone's bereaved, they'll spend a lot of money that if they were thinking clearly, they probably wouldn't.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, especially because you want the best for mom or dad or grandma, right? You know, you want to make sure that they are loved. And in America, of course, we have to show that with money.

• 20:50Sarah Marshall?

  And yet so many of us have parents who bought everything on sale, you know, so.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  I know, right? But I mean, I think also it's worth noting that what happened to the funeral industry is what has happened to a lot of industries in the United States over the years. So for example, big corporations moving into the space. So there's this company called Service Corporation International or SCI. They own like a huge majority. I don't know if it's a majority, but they are the biggest corporation operating in the funeral industry right now. You, you've probably noticed that you haven't seen like an SCI funeral home anywhere. That's because they use the, the brand name dignity memorial.

• 21:28Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, I have seen those.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, they're everywhere.

• 21:31Sarah Marshall?

  Don't they have like the little oval decal?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yes. It's like a little blue, like oval shape. And you've probably also noticed that on those dignity memorial homes that they have a family name under that. It'll be like John L. Smith Funeral Home. And then above that it says dignity memorial. That's because they keep the family name of like when they bought the funeral home, whoever the family was that owned it. They'll keep that on there to make it seem like, oh, it's still your local family funeral home. And sometimes the family is still working there. You know, and they've just been bought out.

• 22:01Sarah Marshall?

  It's a little ghoulish.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  It is ghoulish. It's a little weird. And I don't want to say that, again, like if you've used a dignity memorial funeral home, it's not necessarily like, oh, you won't get good service, but they have a lot less flexibility in terms of what they can do because they're beholden to the corporate pricing structure, the corporate policies, et cetera.

• 22:22Sarah Marshall?

  It's just weird to be turned into a franchise holder at your own family business or to, for there to be the illusion that it still is what it used to be in that way. Cause again, it's like, if they didn't think people wanted that, they wouldn't try to pretend that was what they were doing.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Right. Exactly. Also like private equity companies who are getting into the business too.

• 22:43Sarah Marshall?

  Oh yeah. Private equity makes everything better from what I've heard.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Famously, famously, all your favorite restaurant chains are better now because of private equity.

• 22:52Sarah Marshall?

  Private equity is the reason we get to eat reheated Cisco products at our favorite casual dining establishments.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  At all of our favorite casual dining establishments.

• 23:02Sarah Marshall?

  That's great.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so good.

• 23:04Sarah Marshall?

  I love Cisco.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I think another thing that's similar to perhaps the pharmaceutical industry or other industries, you were talking about how, you know, people can't afford their medicine anymore. And there is, you know, an epidemic of funeral poverty in this country where people simply cannot afford a funeral or even less, you know, not talking about the ceremony where they can't even afford to be buried or cremated. So my friend Amy Shay wrote an amazing book about this called Too Poor to Die. It's interesting because each city and county handles it a little bit differently, but when a body isn't claimed or when a family refuses to claim a body, and when there's not enough resources in their estate to pay for a funeral, the state does have to handle it. So either that's done

• 23:49Speaker 01

  through like the county coroner's office, or here in Louisville, they actually work, the county coroner's office like teams up with a group of like Catholic volunteers who help with the burials, which is really unusual. That's, you know, not common. And then in some counties, they just cremate everyone who's unclaimed. And some, you know, here in Kentucky, they have to bury them because of state laws. They can't get a family member to sign off on a cremation. They have to bury them. So it's full body burials. But then, you know, they have to have these public cemeteries and everything where they bury them. And there's usually not much publicity about these programs because literally because coroner's offices are worried that if people knew that the states would cover it, that more people would refuse to claim their loved ones' bodies.

• 24:34Sarah Marshall?

  Oh God. Wow.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. We were talking about how you can order, you don't have to buy a casket or an urn from the funeral home. You can get stuff from wherever. You can make it if you're a crafty person.

• 24:46Sarah Marshall?

  And is that myth number one?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  That's myth number two. We moved on to myth number two.

• 24:51Sarah Marshall?

  What was myth number one?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Myth number one is that you don't have to do what the funeral home says, just because they have all these packages and stuff.

• 24:57Sarah Marshall?

  I like that one. What do you do if you can't say no?

• 25:00Speaker 01

  What do you do if you can't say no? I would, okay. Well, first of all, don't beat yourself up. Lots of people can't say no. Like lots of people are in a place where it's just kind of a struggle, you know? But you do have options. I mean, like at the funeral home, they're going to offer you a, a different variety of packages. So, you know, you're, you're not necessarily going to be forced into like the most expensive option, but they will show you like a range of options, if that makes sense. So, you know, you can feel comfortable. You, you're not doing your loved one any disservice by picking a package that's affordable to you.

• 25:36Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And do you think that people are, are encouraged to, to feel that way?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Well, no, I think that in this society, people are encouraged to say like, oh, you've got to do the best for mom and dad. And the best is the most expensive one, because that's how we show our love here in America. So I got you the most expensive one. But I think it's worth noting that, you know, if they didn't leave any money behind to help you with funeral costs, which is not uncommon, if they had a life insurance policy or something like that, that can certainly help you pay for the service. My parents had a life insurance policy, so I was able to reimburse myself for their memorials, but I had to pay it first because that life insurance money doesn't come right away. The Funeral Consumers Alliance is a really amazing resource, by the way, if you're trying to save money, planning a funeral, or if you're like trying to get through the dizzying maze of how all of this

• 26:24Speaker 01

  works. And what they recommend doing to save money up for a funeral is to put it in a payable on death bank account. So to like put some money in a bank account and with a payable on death bank account, you can name a beneficiary. So it goes to them, it's, it works like an insurance policy and it can go to them right away without having to go through probate court. So that's like a faster way to get the money for a funeral. But this all implies that you're planning ahead, right?

• 26:48Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  So I would say that the most expensive funeral is not necessarily the best way to honor your loved ones. And it's more important for you probably to think about what you can reasonably afford. But that's why it's, it's important if you can to know about these consumer rights. That's why I wanted to come on this podcast and tell people about them because most people don't even know they have them.

• 27:10Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Well, and I'll also say that you also, you know, don't even necessarily have to have a funeral as such. You just have to figure out what to do with the body. And I feel like that's something that we forget as an option too.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  At all funeral homes, there is an option called direct burial or direct cremation. And that's just the burial or the cremation without any ceremony. And actually for, for my parents, we did direct cremation for both of them. And then we planned our own memorials for them separately, like not with the funeral home, which was not necessarily cheaper because my sister and I were like, oh, we want to make it really personalized to mom and dad. So like, you know, we had my dad's at the golf course. He was an architect. So he designed this golf course clubhouse. And we're like, oh, we're going to have it at this golf course, but that means we have to rent the space. We have to do the catering through them. We have to rent chairs and tables and, you know? So it ended up, you know, we have to pick

• 28:04Speaker 01

  up the bar tab for all my dad's boomer friends, which was very expensive, actually. So it is not necessarily cheaper doing it on your own, but we, you know, that was just us being extra.

• 28:20Sarah Marshall?

  But like, but yeah, it's like nice to have these things happen when you're not dissociating potentially.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Right. Yes.

• 28:26Sarah Marshall?

  Or sometimes it is nice to have these things happen when you're dissociating because that's because there'll be cold cuts.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yes, there will be cold cuts. Yeah. It's, you know, and that was the nice thing about cremation too. With my mom, she died during the pandemic, so we couldn't hold the memorial right away. We had to wait a year before we were able to hold something. And that was, you know, good and bad. It was, it was kind of difficult because we couldn't get that closure, but also. It did take away some of the direct impact of the death by the time the memorial rolled around. Whereas my dad's, we didn't wait as long, but we did wait a few months just to give our, you know, we said in the obituary, his daughters will be holding a memorial sometime this summer, just so that we could get our lives together before we had to like, take on a huge crowd of people, many of whom we only vaguely knew who wanted to hug us, you know?

• 29:16Speaker 01

  But obviously, if you're burying someone, you usually have to do it a lot faster.

• 29:20Sarah Marshall?

  Well, yeah, unless you're on like an Arctic research station, potentially.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  No, if you're on an Arctic research station, you do have more time.

• 29:28Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, um, which is nice, but well, and so in terms of people not knowing their rights in these situations, why do you think that is?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  There's lots of reasons. I definitely think the funeral industry doesn't want you to know. Like they actively lobby against any changes to the funeral rule because they don't want any updates. They don't want to make it easier for people. So that's one thing. They certainly don't want you to know. And, you know, I think to a certain extent, that's how they make their money. It makes sense like any other industry would do the same, right? Uh, the other problem is that death is such a taboo, right? We don't talk about it at all. And, and money is also taboo. It's considered quite tacky to talk about your financial situation with your loved ones or with friends.

• 30:06Sarah Marshall?

  So it's like two taboos and a little Ouroboros.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:11Sarah Marshall?

  It's funny because I feel like we think that sex is a big taboo, but actually we like to talk about sex every second. I think Americans probably talk about it more than we actually do it.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:24Sarah Marshall?

  As the numbers go, um, money is really the thing that we're afraid of.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I didn't have any conversations with my parents about money before they died, not really death either. I knew they wanted to be cremated, but that's about it. But no, like I knew that they would probably have saved some money, but I was like, I don't know, what if they catch, like, what if the diseases they die of drain all their finances? I have no idea because I'm not the one paying their bills, so I don't know.

• 30:49Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it, it was just, it's, it's ideal to talk about these things if you can, but that's, yeah, that's one reason I think people don't know they have these consumer rights is because we're not talking directly about death and we're not talking directly about money.

• 31:02Sarah Marshall?

  Right. And there's, I think, maybe a feeling for many of us that like, if we continue on in denial of death, then it won't ever happen. And then when it does happen, then like we, then it's, and it turns out we haven't prevented it. And then we don't know how much anything costs.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Right. It's, it's really, uh, it's definitely a superstition that people feel like talking about death will bring it about. And I don't know how you feel as someone who's lost a parent, but I tried to, you know, find empathy for people, but I find that very frustrating now as someone who's lost two parents because it's like, it doesn't matter. Like, whether you talk about it or not, it's gonna happen. And I hope for your sake that you're better prepared than I was. Yeah.

• 31:47Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And I, I feel like maybe part of that fear is, is the fear that if, if you think about it or talk about it too much, it'll, I don't know, you'll, you'll get some experience of, of what it'll be like. And the truth is that nothing will ever feel like it's gonna feel like.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 32:04Sarah Marshall?

  I think it's reasonable to say, so you don't have to worry about that. Um, you can, you can think about some logistical stuff.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  It's really hard to describe what it's like watching someone die. I mean, partially because it's different for every single person, you know, slightly, but yeah, it's, it's not gonna feel how you expect it to feel. I didn't know whether I was gonna be like falling over, crying, or if I was going to, you know, shut out the world, or if I couldn't have predicted that before it happened to me. I had no idea how I was going to react. And as it turns out, I have like a really active form of grief where I'm like, oh, gotta get things done. That's how I can honor their memories by like taking care of the, uh, logistics, which I think is why a lot of website and book stuff happened. Although my sister was the total opposite, who was very like hard on her sleeves, emotions out, that sort of thing.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  And I think we were good balances for each other in that way, because she could remind me that it's okay to sit down and be sad. And I could be like, yeah, I know you're sad, but can you just sign this one form while you're crying? So we can get this part done. Yeah.

• 33:08Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Well, and then of course, you know, I'm a, not exactly an only child. I have half siblings, but you know, I, an only child in some senses. And so my assumptions about how things are gonna go are biased in that direction in many ways. And yeah, I would describe the inability to anticipate grief thing, especially for parental death as like, that it's like, it's not even like a feeling. It's like every feeling you've ever had plus like a whole basket of new ones. And you're like, oh, wow, new feelings.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes. And it's

• 33:41Sarah Marshall?

  Kind of cool.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  And it never goes away. Really, it just changes. And also it's weird how much you forget, like often it happens on a weekly basis where I'm like, oh, I, I, this crazy thing happened. I gotta call dad. And then I'm like, oh, I can't call dad.

• 33:55Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I know. I don't, and it's, it's also, and I would never want to stop feeling like that. Like there are still things occasionally that, yeah, it's exactly like that. I want to tell him about it. And then I'm like, oh, that's funny that I can't do that. But like, I still, I don't ever want there to not be pockets of me that think I can do that.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  No, I totally agree. It's like, I don't know, grief changes your perspective. But I think like in an important and helpful way, um, not that it's like good that they died, but

• 34:26Sarah Marshall?

  Like I don't, it's not something we weren't designed to go through.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Right, right. We were designed to go through it. It's like very, it's a very human thing.

• 34:34Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, which is nice.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:36Sarah Marshall?

  Cause there's a lot of horrors around right now that we really didn't evolve to go through at all, but grief we actually did. So it's like, hey, finally, something that our DNA recognizes. That's so cool. I would describe it maybe in this moment is like, it's, it's like immediately after someone dies, I think often it feels like this boulder. You know, like there's just the wake up and there's this giant boulder in the middle of your house and you can like barely squeeze around it to get to the bathroom. And you're like, that's cool that there's this boulder that lives with me now.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:08Sarah Marshall?

  And then over time, it like, it gets smaller, but also not consistently, like it'll jump around in sizes on different days. And then like, after a while, it's like a pebble that you carry around. And then one day you wake up and it's like a bigger rock for that day. And then it goes back down again. But yeah, like even if it's just like a little pebble, you still can feel it.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. But then in some ways, the experience can be kind of untethering where it's like, if you, if you have a parent or, or whoever who has experienced a long illness, like my mom died of liver disease. She was dying for a very long time. It suddenly feels like this weight is like gone the second that she has died because it's like all of the caregiving stuff is not there anymore. Like all of these tasks, all these like things that you had to worry about are like, you know, her pain, her suffering, like all of that is like, you don't have to worry about it anymore. And it's really weird not having to worry about it. And so it's like this thing that's tethered you to like a certain kind of existence is just not there anymore. And so you have to kind of, so you're like, in some ways like happy that like she's not suffering anymore and that you and your family aren't, you know,

• 36:15Speaker 01

  kind of having these extra responsibilities, but also it's like, but at what cost? You know what I mean? So it's like this kind of distressing weightlessness. And then it's maybe a, a effort to like figure out how to tie yourself back to the earth again. I don't know if that metaphor made any sense, but.

• 36:32Sarah Marshall?

  No, I think so. And yeah, and that does make sense too, the way that you described it. So, so yeah, it's like you're going through one of the most complex emotional experiences of your life. And you also have to pick out, you have to throw a really sad wedding, as you put it.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a really, it

• 36:48Sarah Marshall?

  Right now.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Right now. There are so many similarities, I swear, between like a funeral and a wedding. I make jokes about it in my book, how there's like a guest book, you know what I mean? Like that's really common at both. Like people probably bring you cards. Where do you put them? You know? You have to get flowers. There's just so many different things that are, there are just a lot of similarities, similarities between funerals and weddings. But, uh, one is just sadder, you know, you have to eat. That's the other thing. People are like, it's like when you're a bride at a wedding and you forget to eat because you're talking with everyone. It's like the same thing at a funeral. Everyone wants to talk to you. And people are like, my friends were great. They were like, no, you have to eat, sit down, eat this sandwich, go now.

• 37:25Sarah Marshall?

  But when you get married, people don't all give you casserole, although perhaps they should.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, although that can get overwhelming too, when you have like a fridge that's full of, of pity casseroles. It's like sometimes like I, I simply cannot eat all of this casserole. I mean, you can only freeze so much. The freezer is only so big.

• 37:42Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  But you know, the, the, the impulse is kind.

• 37:46Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I would suggest instead of a casserole being like, can I walk your dog? Or like things that like, can I do these chores for you that you might not want to do right now?

• 37:55Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  But yes, uh, it's still nice to bring a casserole.

• 37:59Sarah Marshall?

  My idea is what about a gift card to Best Buy? Doesn't everyone need something from Best Buy?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe you do. A gift card to Best Buy would be pretty good. Or like, I don't know, like a, a little like gift card to the mall. So you can just sort of like go aimlessly shop at stores and not think about it.

• 38:18Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, something to dissociate.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be nice.

• 38:21Sarah Marshall?

  Around or, or during a dissociation gift card.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:25Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  There's a, there's our idea, our capitalist idea right there. The dissociation gift card.

• 38:30Sarah Marshall?

  A gift card for gas for when you're driving around aimlessly.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:35Sarah Marshall?

  Because you don't feel that you belong anywhere any longer.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Movie theaters. So you can just go to the movie theater all day and watch movies back to back.

• 38:45Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. This is just like, this is a nice conversation. And I feel like part of this whole topic because I feel like, yeah, I'm just reflecting on like grief as part of the sort of, you know, the last, last few years of all of our lives. Cause I feel like we've experienced sort of like mass grief with the pandemic in a sense, and was sort of losing our democracy.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, and I think it's crazy that we haven't grieved that in a more formal way. I do like part of me has this crackpot theory that that's at the root of so many of our, of our problems these days. Is that like millions of people died and we were like, never mind, we're just not gonna think about that.

• 39:23Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, repressed grief. It's the Gothic baby.

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, exactly. It is the Gothic. Why don't we at least have a like memorial day, like a national day of mourning, you know?

• 39:34Sarah Marshall?

  Because it would be unpatriotic to admit to any feelings of weakness or vulnerability, apparently.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, yeah, I suppose it would.

• 39:43Sarah Marshall?

  Uh, but yeah, I think that's, I think that's true. Yeah. And that's, you know, this is what slasher movies have to tell us. That if something really sad happens in the past and we don't deal with it, one day we're just gonna find ourselves. You know, killing camp counselors who are having sex in the woods and there are better ways to spend your time.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  There are better ways to deal with it than murdering camp counselors having sex in the woods.

• 40:07Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, that's really the take home.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:11Sarah Marshall?

  That's one of the myths that that is the best way to deal with your emotions, but it isn't.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:17Sarah Marshall?

  Because to say like, looking back, I'm just, it is sort of amazing to think like, wow, like there were like times in the past few years when I was like sadder than I ever thought I'd be in my whole life.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 40:31Sarah Marshall?

  And now I am not that sad, but like things felt so awful for, for some periods that I was like, this is it with, I can't, I, I, I am never going to get out of this hole. Surely no one has ever gotten out of a hole this deep.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:46Sarah Marshall?

  Um, and yet.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  You did.

• 40:48Sarah Marshall?

  People do and you know, and you will. Yeah.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sad and scared, I think.

• 40:53Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  It was just this like heightened, this like sense of constant uncertainty and like, is walking, am I going to die because I have to walk my dog? Like especially in those early days of the pandemic, you know, that's just like a very stressful, stressful way to live. And, and then all these people are dying and we're just not talking about it. And people are like having debates about whether or not we should go back to the office. And it's like, is this really the debate we need to be having right now?

• 41:20Sarah Marshall?

  And everyone's supposed to be emailing right through it.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, I, I, I used to have a corporate job and I don't have one now. And I have to say, the greatest thing in the world is not having to email through it.

• 41:33Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  When some great national tragedy occurs, I don't have to email through it. And that is.

• 41:40Sarah Marshall?

  Or Slack right through it for that matter.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Right. This is, you know, I can't complain about my teams at my corporate job. They were all lovely people, but, uh, just, just the idea of having to continue to work. I remember like when Uvalde happened, I was like, why are we doing this? Why are we here? Let's all go take the rest of the afternoon to think about how we got here.

• 42:02Sarah Marshall?

  It's like, uh, you have 27 unread Slack messages. I think we all know. You gotta say, you gotta Slack right through.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just, it's horrible. Yeah.

• 42:13Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Um, have you ever, sorry, this is total tangent. Have you ever read Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kalsuki?

• 42:19Sarah Marshall?

  No, but I was just looking at it, at it at a bookstore the other day, thinking about buying it, but decided to contemplate it further.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  It was a pretty fun, My Consciousness Is Trapped in Slack novel.

• 42:29Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, okay. Yeah, that's a fun idea. That's, that's a, that answers Chelsea Webber Smith's desire for a literal ghost in the machine.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, literally. Like that's, that's what it's about. And it's like, I have to convince my coworkers this is true and that they need to go feed my body.

• 42:46Sarah Marshall?

  But nice.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:47Sarah Marshall?

  You know, that was my biggest problem with Don't Worry Darling is that, um, spoilers, spoilers for Don't Worry Darling. Skip ahead if you don't want to be spoiled for Don't Worry Darling. Um, was that Florence Pugh's consciousness is living inside of a simulation. And it turns out that Harry Styles, um, playing an incel is taking care of her basically comatose body while they both are living inside the simulation. And I was like, do you mean to tell me that he is adequately caring for her corporeal body and preventing her from getting bed sores and stuff?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:22Sarah Marshall?

  While she's living it. I, I realize that's like maybe an unnecessary level of detail, but it really took me out.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Um, Sarah, as someone who volunteers with hospice patients a lot these days, I've not seen that movie, but I would have the same reaction. Preventing bed sores is a lot of work. You have to, you know, that requires a lot of care, um, and a lot of moving the body. And then, yeah, I don't know if that does, is he, is he properly lifting her feet on a pillow to make sure her ankles aren't, you know, touching the bed?

• 43:48Sarah Marshall?

  I really don't think so. You know, we can go, we can look at the tape.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Bonus episode. We watched that and critique it based on like body care. Yeah.

• 43:57Sarah Marshall?

  That was, that was like a good looking movie that just like, I don't know. It's, there's a lot of movies where there, there's a twist that like, if you haven't seen it before, plays really well. But then if you watch it knowing how it's going to go, you're like, hmm, that's a little silly.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:15Sarah Marshall?

  Although I, if you want it to work it well, like, you know, when you watch The Sixth Sense, you're like, well, you know, it's confusing to be a ghost. So there are a lot of things that, you know, you don't necessarily think through. And then when you're like, oh no, I'm a ghost.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:31Sarah Marshall?

  It all makes sense, but I, I will take this moment to recommend The Others as a movie with a twist that does not seem silly when you know it, um, from the start. Have you seen that one?

• 44:44Speaker 01

  I actually haven't seen The Others. Okay, that's good.

• 44:46Sarah Marshall?

  Nicole Kidman.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  I'm gonna, I know, I know it has Nicole Kidman. I'm going to watch that. Last night I watched Hocum, which had a really obvious twist. So I'm really excited to watch something.

• 44:55Sarah Marshall?

  Do you recommend it? Was it obvious fun or obvious bad?

• 44:59Speaker 01

  I would say good jump scares, if you like jump scares, some good visual stuff. I liked his other movies a lot. Damien McCarthy. I really liked, um, Caveat and Oddity. So I was really looking forward to Hocum. And I will say maybe not my favorite of the trilogy, mainly because the twist was very obvious, but still some fun visual stuff and some good jump scares. So if you are a jump scare fan, perhaps watch Hocum.

• 45:22Sarah Marshall?

  I do like jump scares, although I like even more the thing where like something shows up on screen and you're asked to sort of notice it yourself.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 45:32Sarah Marshall?

  Or there's like less intensive, like a jump scare sound effect. You know, I watched Halloween recently, like projected onto my wall.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 45:41Sarah Marshall?

  And that movie like plays really, really much better if you watch it in the dark.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I bet.

• 45:47Sarah Marshall?

  I think. And there'll be like, you know, Michael Myers face emerging from the dark and guess this tiny little musical sting like, doo.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:57Sarah Marshall?

  By the time we put this out, it won't be Halloween anymore, but I think November is still Halloween movie season.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  You know, it's always spooky season in our hearts.

• 46:05Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  And yeah, I do think on autumn generally it's that time.

• 46:10Sarah Marshall?

  Exactly. Um, okay. Where, where are we in our myths? How many myths do we have?

• 46:16Speaker 01

  We have two more. We were about to start myth number three, I think, which is that the body has to be embalmed.

• 46:24Sarah Marshall?

  Oh yeah. Okay. And I'm, could you describe actually quickly for us what embalming is? Cause I, I feel like even probably exactly what we're talking about is worth establishing.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I think that's fair. So embalming, it has a long history that mainly got started, uh, during the US Civil War.

• 46:44Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Yes, because we were like trying to send soldiers back home to their families to have funerals, but soldiers' bodies do not last very long on hot train cars. So they were trying to find a way to preserve the body with chemicals. So that's initially where we got embalming and it's obviously come a long way since the Civil War.

• 47:05Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  But it's, it's very popular in the United States, especially if you're burying a body, especially if you are having a viewing for that body. But, um, there can be different degrees of embalming, but specifically it's preserving the body usually with chemicals of some kind. So they will drain blood from the veins. They will inject various embalming chemicals into the veins instead.

• 47:32Sarah Marshall?

  Do you drain all the blood and replace all of it with chemicals or like just some?

• 47:37Speaker 01

  I believe, I'm not an expert in embalming, but yes, they drain the blood. I believe they drain all of the blood from the body and replace it with embalming chemicals. Yes. And they're often injecting different chemicals into other like bodily cavities.

• 47:49Sarah Marshall?

  When I learned that, who knows when, I remember as a kid feeling pretty distressed by that. I feel like now it's like familiar enough of an idea that I don't feel that same ick. But I think my feeling at the time, which as I think about it now, it seems as real as it, as it did to me then is if your blood has been replaced and your blood is like a pretty important part of you in the scheme of things, then like, are you still you? Like that really seemed odd to me when I first learned it.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's a ship of Theseus, ship of Theseus situation. Like how much of your body do they, cause they, they do a lot of other stuff too. I mean, typically embalming is with the, the chemicals, but then of course they are often like using wire to like keep the jaw shut so that your mouth, cause it's like pretty common when someone dies for the mouth to just sort of fall open.

• 48:37Sarah Marshall?

  Right. And, and again, I, I understand that this is like, you know, a really skilled trade and like making a corpse like presentable is like, takes a lot of art, you know, but, but yeah, it always struck me as odd that that was the default choice, at least in this country. And then if you wanted to be like, oh, you know, just, just, I feel like I'm just so like Harry Truman about this. Not the president, but the guy who wouldn't evacuate from Mount St. Helens, but just like, oh, just throw me in a pine box and put me in the ground as the Lord made me.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  It's interesting.

• 49:12Sarah Marshall?

  How I feel about it.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  I feel like a lot of people feel that way or express that sentiment, but embalming is so generally the popular choice. And I do think as the professionalization of the funeral industry went on, like in the early 1900s, it kind of became this thing like, that's what will give families closure is if they can see their loved one as if they were sleeping, you know, and they, as they were peacefully sleeping.

• 49:38Sarah Marshall?

  And by the time millennials came along, they were like, ah, whatever. Let's just, let's just cremate everybody. They don't need to see people again.

• 49:47Sarah Marshall?

  Because I feel like most millennials haven't been to an open casket funeral, I would imagine. That's not a real statistic, but I certainly haven't been and I don't, I can't think of anybody my age who I've specifically talked to about having experienced that. I would say they seem to be on the decline anecdotally.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  They are on the decline. The statistics show that cremation in general is like far, it's on track to surpass burials, but it's not quite there yet, I don't think. But when I was little, I went to several, not in my immediate family, but for like extended family members, I went to several open casket funerals and wakes. So I remember seeing it that way.

• 50:30Sarah Marshall?

  What was that like for you?

• 50:32Speaker 01

  I remember it being a little weird as a kid. Like, it was just sort of like, okay, I don't know what to do with this. Like, my parents would like walk me up to the casket to sort of look and say goodbye, but I didn't quite know exactly what my reaction should be to that. I wasn't scared necessarily, but I was, it just looked sort of odd because no matter how skilled a person is, it's like they're still dead, you know? So it's just, it's just an odd thing.

• 51:00Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, it's not fooling anybody.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  No, no, it's just, I've always found it sort of odd. And in my immediate family, that was never a thing. Like, my grandparents even were cremated. So yeah, I didn't do it for any, I'm hard pressed to say what would have happened if it were someone that I was really, really close to. I think that might be a really different experience. But for, you know, these people that I wasn't particularly close to, it's just a little odd. I actually went to one relatively recently because, as I was saying, I volunteer with hospice patients and one of them died and the family invited us all to the wake, you know, if we wanted to come. So I went to the wake and they had done embalming on her body. And it was just awfully strange to see this, you know, 80 something year old woman that we

• 51:47Speaker 01

  had been caring for, you know, just made up. It was odd to see her instead of, instead of the state where we had been caring for her, you know, where she's, we're watching TV with her and she's just kind of hanging out in bed, you know? Now to see her all like made up properly was a little bit odd to see her so formal, I guess.

• 52:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, right. And it seems like sort of the cultural ideas around this have changed, both slow and fast in a way.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:12Sarah Marshall?

  But it's such, it's like a very specific thing to have as a default, I guess I'll say. And, you know, nothing against embalming generally. It's not for me. My plan currently, as I've told you before, is to go to the body farm so that I can contribute to science and I can still be a part of things for a little longer.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:33Sarah Marshall?

  But I, it's interesting for there to be such a one size fits all approach to, to something that happens by definition to everybody, not to point out the obvious.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yes, I do think that in the past, as the funeral industry professionalized, there was a big emphasis on not decaying, like stopping decay at all costs. So not only embalming, but you know.

• 52:53Sarah Marshall?

  And again, I find that creepy because especially, and I know that this comes along later, but the whole like Carl Sagan thing of like, we're all star stuff and the idea that our, you know, our matter sort of returns to the earth. And it's like, well, not if you get embalmed and put in a really expensive casket, it doesn't, then you're just kind of locked in there.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:12Sarah Marshall?

  You know, I don't, I don't love that.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  No, and being buried six feet under isn't particularly good for decomposition either. It's like much too deep for the microorganisms to get you. So yeah, it's like, I mean, you will decompose, it'll just take longer. But yeah.

• 53:25Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, well, good. But even so, and I'd like to then not decompose and like have all these chemicals come out of me, like the butter out of chicken keev.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Well, and yes, that's a, wow, that is a, an image. Did you know, by the way, sorry, this is a tangent, that there is pumpkin spice scented embalming fluid?

• 53:46Sarah Marshall?

  No, but that's, that's cute. Is that, does it smell like that for your mourners? Are they like, oh, pumpkin spice?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  I don't think you can request it. I think it's more like something that like funeral homes, like mortuary technicians can purchase, you know, for their job. It's not something that you would get to choose as like the family.

• 54:02Sarah Marshall?

  So like when you're embalming, you're like, oh, pumpkin spice?

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have to work around this chemical all the time. I'd rather smell pumpkin spice. Yeah, I guess.

• 54:09Sarah Marshall?

  Good for them. Yeah. What if it was like the dentist with fluoride, where I feel like they would be like, they would have like two flavors of fluoride or something? I feel like historically.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You can get like mint or bubble gum or cherry.

• 54:22Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, yeah. Bubble gum was always one of the options. Yeah, bubble gum embalming fluid.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, here's the thing about embalming fluid is that I think one reason it's.

• 54:33Sarah Marshall?

  Amazingly, the first time that sentence has been spoken on this show, if you can believe it.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Wow, wow. Glad to bring it around. I'm glad to be an original here. Um, yeah. The thing about embalming fluid is that I think one reason it's becoming less popular is that it's debated how its impact on the environment is, but there are a lot of people who would argue that it is not good for the environment, especially in older bodies that were, you know, even to this day, formaldehyde is often used. And there is some debate about whether that formaldehyde goes straight from the body into the ground, or whether it breaks down into like a less harmful chemical as you decompose and then it goes to the ground in a less harmful way. But a lot of people are against embalming fluids for that reason. Like, that's, you know.

• 55:19Sarah Marshall?

  I feel like the, the ground in America has been through enough as it is. We probably don't need to push it any further.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah. I mean, I too am not a huge fan of embalming. But again, I don't want to, you know, I think you should have this type of funeral you want to have.

• 55:34Sarah Marshall?

  If you've embalmed your loved ones, then that's great.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. If that's what they wanted, or if that's what you wanted.

• 55:39Sarah Marshall?

  I want there to be more choices for everybody.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. And I think another reason that people thought embalming was so important is that funeral homes led people to think that it was important because they led people to believe that it would be unsanitary not to embalm. And they led people to believe that it was, you know, like this crucial thing. Whereas it's not required under any state law. There's no state law that requires embalming, except, except in like maybe very unusual circumstances. Funeral homes can insist that you have to embalm if you want to work with them, but under the funeral rule, you have the right to shop around. They can't charge you for anything you don't want.

• 56:15Sarah Marshall?

  Nice.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  So it's really not required and it's really not an issue of sanitation, quite frankly.

• 56:22Sarah Marshall?

  And I'm sure that that does play on like historical fears of like improper disposal of bodies and it's, you know, negative effect on, on sanitation. Because of course, we do have a rich history of that.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 56:34Sarah Marshall?

  But that this just doesn't solve it, is the thing. Yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Right. It doesn't solve it. And the fact is, the way we typically die now, it's like, unless your loved one died of a very infectious disease, you can spend quite a lot of time with the body before you call the funeral home. And even if you want, even if you want to have a, like a family viewing the next day or something like that, refrigeration would probably be enough to keep that body intact for like a viewing. You know, I think people think, oh, someone dies and then they're like immediately going to start decomposing and the bacteria will cause you to get sick. It takes a while, especially in a place with air conditioning, you know, I, you can spend several hours with the body before it starts

• 57:19Speaker 01

  even remotely decomposing. And then refrigeration can maintain a body for quite a while without having to embalm. Yeah.

• 57:28Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, just like bringing home a red snapper.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Yes. Sure. It's exactly like bringing home a red snapper. That is exactly what sitting with a dead body is like.

• 57:38Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, there are no differences. Is that an option that's becoming available? I think I've heard in the past of like refrigeration as an embalming alternative, like for viewings and things like that. Has that come up for you?

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's certainly something you can request. You can say, I don't want to embalm, but like the next day, the family, some family wants to come see the body and they can, I mean, your funeral home should be refrigerating the body. Like, it would be pretty poor practice to not refrigerate the body.

• 58:04Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  The reason they want you to embalm, of course, is they get more money for embalming the body, you know?

• 58:09Sarah Marshall?

  Yes, of course.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  So that's the main thing there. It's worth noting too, that it is actually legal in all 50 states to keep the body at home and have a home funeral. So this is what people did for like most of human history. It's why you're, why a funeral parlor is called a funeral parlor, because people used to have. You know, parlors, the parlors at their homes is where they laid out the body when people would come to have a funeral.

• 58:35Sarah Marshall?

  Because the parlor is like the nice front room where you would have like the piano and have company over. And so naturally, that is where you would would have a wake.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So it is perfectly legal to keep the body at home and have a home funeral. There's an organization called the Home Funeral Alliance that can give you information about, you know, how and when to cool the body and how and when to do all of this. There are, in some states, you do have to work with a licensed funeral director in order to do it. But in some states, no, you can just do it on your own. So the Home Funeral Alliance has some good information about that, if that's something you're interested in, if you don't want to work with a funeral home at all.

• 59:11Sarah Marshall?

  This is cool.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's, I can see the upsides and downsides. I mean, it's, it can be a lot of work, you know, to make sure you're cooling the body properly after, again, this would be after several hours. You don't need to do it right away. And you can honestly use like ice packs a lot of the time. But, you know, to make sure it all happens and to make sure you get all the necessary paperwork done and that, you know, that can require a lot of effort. So I can understand the impulse to work with a funeral home.

• 59:36Sarah Marshall?

  It's like buying a house without a Realtor, in a way.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of. You know, it's just like, you have to handle a lot more of the logistical stuff that you wouldn't have to if you went through a Realtor. So the same thing here, you'd have to handle a lot more of the logistical stuff that the funeral home would handle otherwise. Because, I mean, I think a lot of people, here's another mini myth that we can, or I don't know if it's a myth, really, but the funeral home, for example, is how you're going to get death certificates for that body. So you give them a bunch of information about your loved one, and then they file for those death certificates for you. So that's usually not something you have to do on your own. It's like, they'll take care of the bureaucracy of filing that information with the government to get the death certificates. And a lot of them will include them in packages, like this package comes with a funeral, like

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  a funeral, a burial, and like five death certificates, or whatever, because death certificates are crucial to the next part of the post-death logistical process of probate. And basically, every company who ever existed is going to want a brand new copy of a death certificate. And those death certificates cost money, of course, so.

• 1:00:44Sarah Marshall?

  Of course they do.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:46Sarah Marshall?

  This is like, it's amazing what things in American life cost money, and like, more than you would think, you know, like if you're, for example, if you've been like, wrongfully convicted of a crime, and you're trying to appeal your sentence, the pages to the transcript from your own trial will cost money for you. Like, that can be a major expense, depending on how much you need. I don't think any, as a Law & Order watching ninth grade, it never would have occurred to me that such a thing could be true. And also, it sure didn't come up on Law & Order, for some reason.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  No, they never did the Law & Order probate episode, where someone just has to go through the entire probate process.

• 1:01:30Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, I would love that spinoff. What if it was just like intentionally boring Law & Order?

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  I'd watch it.

• 1:01:36Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I would too. I would put it on to fall asleep, too.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would be perfect. Yeah. Um, yeah, death certificates can be expensive. Like, I think with my parents, where they died, it was $12 per certificate. But I know they can range anywhere from like six to, six to $25, depending on the area. And you can always get more through the funeral home. Like, even after my dad died, I had to go back to the funeral home and get more of my mom's death certificates, because they had joint accounts that I had to present both death certificates for. So you have to pay money every time. Like, I've, I've probably spent, at this point, with as many, like, because it depends on how many accounts you have, but even like, the phone company needs a death certificate, the bank, like, everything is going to ask for a death certificate.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  So I've probably spent, I don't know, somewhere around $150 to $200 on death certificates at this point.

• 1:02:30Sarah Marshall?

  That's ridiculous. Wow.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would not be surprised if that were the total.

• 1:02:34Sarah Marshall?

  They should at least sell them in like a roll.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be nice. And you can ask the companies to send them back to you. It's just that, like, most of them won't. That's happened like once. So, yeah.

• 1:02:46Sarah Marshall?

  Wow.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's not great. But yeah, you get those through the funeral home. And if you're not going through the funeral home, then you have to file for those death certificates yourself. And again, like, there are resources to help you figure out how to do that, but it's just one of those logistical things that the funeral home will take care of otherwise.

• 1:03:01Sarah Marshall?

  This feels like bad news for those of us who struggle with this type of chore, even in the best of times. But maybe part of the moral here is that there are so many more people struggling with that kind of thing than we were ever taught to expect.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:17Sarah Marshall?

  And that, you know, if that is a struggle, then the one thing that you can be sure of is that you're not alone in struggling with that.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Well, right, that's one reason I talk about this stuff all the time, is because, like, people die all the time. I am one of gajillions of people every year who has to deal with getting the correct amount of death certificates, you know? And it's just crazy that we never talk about, that we never talk about it. Like, why is it never at the bar? We're like, oh, yeah, man, getting death certificates is horrible. And then we like commiserate together over a beer. You know, it's just, it's, it's, at the very least, you're not going through it alone. And if we talk about it, maybe we can share some tips and tricks to make it a little bit easier.

• 1:03:56Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Um, okay, are we ready for myth number four?

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Yes. Myth number four is kind of a doozy. There's a lot to talk about here. So, but it's one of my favorite things to talk about. And quite frankly, it's one of the things that people ask me about the most, or people seem most interested in talking about, I should say. And myth number four is that burial and cremation are my only options. And the fact is, no, you have lots of options for disposition of a body. There are other things you can do besides traditional burial and fire cremation.

• 1:04:32Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, what have we got?

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So first, you, you brought up earlier is body donation. You talked about body farms, which is where people can donate their bodies to be used by forensic scientists and forensic science students to learn how bodies decompose. Body donation is legal in every state, either directly through nonprofit research institutions, or, this is a weird part, through private companies that then sell the remains to various institutions. It's still free for the donor. So yes, capitalism is here, too. You can work directly with a private institution. So if you search your local university and search for like a body donation program, or an anatomical

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  bequest program, they're sometimes called, you can sign up to, after you die, have your body donated to the university, usually for medical research in that case. And then there are like private companies where you can sign up with them to donate your body, and then they will sell the body to various research institutions, or government institutions, or other companies for research. So that's one caveat with body donation, is that it's free for you. It's the only method of disposition that's like, free, you know? You don't have to pay for it. So that's kind of a big deal for those of us who are like, oh, my God, how am I going to pay for all of this? But one caveat is that you don't always get to choose what research they do on the body. So even if you donate your body with like

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  a medical school, right? Like, plastic surgery students also have to practice, right? So that's what they might be doing to your body, is plastic surgery research. They might separate parts of your body and do different research on different parts of your body, you know? That's something they could choose to do. And then if you go with the private company that can sell your remains to any number of institutions, or government institutions, or what have you, you know, who knows what, like, military research, or whatever your body will be used for, right?

• 1:06:31Sarah Marshall?

  Military research.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:34Sarah Marshall?

  Say more.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the military also has, you know, scientific, I mean, I don't know, like, a ton of specifics, but I've heard that there are like cases where-

• 1:06:43Sarah Marshall?

  You know, kind of the last group that you want to help at this point.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, like, landmine research, what are the effects of this weapon on what, you know, that sort of thing. Not ideal, to me at least. I mean, maybe if you're really into military stuff, that sounds like fun.

• 1:07:00Sarah Marshall?

  I feel like, I feel like a clueless joke coming on of like, you know? You know how picky I am about my shoes and they only go on my feet, you know, like I, I, I stress about what to do when I have to get rid of an old laptop. I definitely want to have, yeah, more control over what happens to my mortal remains.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Sarah Marshall?

  Again, me personally.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what I will say is that like, if you're donating to a medical school, you can at least be assured that they are doing medical research on your body of some kind.

• 1:07:33Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, that they're not using it to train the Killbot 4000.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And you know, I don't want to suggest that there's like, there is some fraud in this industry. I don't want to suggest that it's all fraud. Also, I have a friend whose parents went with the, like their parents, so my friend's grandparents went with one of these private companies and her parents loved it so much. They thought it was like so good to deal with them that they signed up to donate their bodies. They were like so impressed by this private company.

• 1:08:00Sarah Marshall?

  I thought you were gonna say, and then her parents were shopping at Home Goods and found her grandparents' skeletons on clearance.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what they do with them afterwards. They put them at Michael's for Halloween decor.

• 1:08:13Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, they donate them to Home Goods. Well, that is one of the stories about Poltergeist, that they used real skeletons in the, a scene near the end and they didn't tug Jo Beth Williams at the time because it was cheaper. I, I believe that it was because it was cheaper and this is very, this is a very bleak piece of movie trivia, that it was cheaper to buy a real human skeleton from India than to buy a plastic skeleton. And so they went with that, which is the exact kind of thing that is the reason people are being haunted in the movie.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, you know, I haven't seen that movie because I have my own special superstition when it comes to that movie, is that the little girl who plays like the main girl in that movie.

• 1:09:04Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm. Heather O'Rourke.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. If you look at her and you look at me when we were children, we look exactly the same. And in real life, she died the day before I was born.

• 1:09:14Sarah Marshall?

  Well.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  And I'm just like, that's cursed. That's cursed. I'm not watching this movie.

• 1:09:19Sarah Marshall?

  What if you're the re, with a reincarnated Heather O'Rourke? But then that means that a bunch of autograph hounds are gonna start bothering you now. So.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Anyway, it just, it's a little uncanny and I, I don't want to deal with it. So I just, I won't watch, I won't watch Poltergeist on principle. But you know, using skeletons from India sounds like something. I mean, everything I've heard about that movie is like, it's cursed and they just did all these horrible things on set and everybody died and it's terrible or something.

• 1:09:49Sarah Marshall?

  But Jo Beth Williams soldiers on, yeah, wait, or does she? Um, let's just see, let's, let's check on. Jo Beth Williams. Yes. Jo Beth Williams is doing great and she is going to be 78 on December 6th. So happy birthday, Jo Beth Williams.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Good for her. Happy birthday. That's wonderful. I'm glad you survived Poltergeist.

• 1:10:11Sarah Marshall?

  This episode should be called Happy Birthday, Jo Beth Williams.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  You're wrong about death subtitle, Happy Birthday, Jo Beth Williams.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, but back, back to body donation. So that's one caveat. The other caveat is that these programs might reject the body for any number of reasons. So it's good to have a plan B.

• 1:10:31Sarah Marshall?

  Oh God, that would be embarrassing.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  If the body, well, you know, it can be like if you die, like during COVID, if you had died of COVID, I mean, not that it's over, but you know, if you die of COVID-19, a lot of times they won't take the body. If it's like too overweight, too underweight. So yeah, there's usually like a list of reasons on their websites that like they may or may not take a body. But yeah, so.

• 1:10:50Sarah Marshall?

  It's like trying to recycle a jug.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  We all have like a number printed on us somewhere. It's like, no, wrong number. We don't take this kind. Um.

• 1:11:03Sarah Marshall?

  They're like, do you see that little symbol on your butt? That means we don't recycle.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  We don't recycle this kind of body. We don't recycle Sarah's or Becky's. Sorry.

• 1:11:13Sarah Marshall?

  Did you ever see, this is my last tangent for the moment, but there's.

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  I don't believe you.

• 1:11:19Sarah Marshall?

  No, you know, you shouldn't. But one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, which I think was written by Ray Bradbury, is called, I think I Sing the Body Electric. And it's about these children who are given a robot grandma. And then at the end of the episode, they're all grown up. And so she's sent back to the robot grandma factory to be stripped for parts and reconstituted into other grandmas. And someday I hope we have that technology.

• 1:11:45Sarah Marshall?

  It's so weird that they're like, all right, back to the factory with you. It's like, wait, she's a robot. Can't they just keep her around until everyone in this bloodline has died out and then send her back to be reconstituted into other grandmas? Is there a shortage of grandma parts? Do they need a grandma rock her arm real bad?

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Like, why would they have to reconstitute them? Why couldn't they just like reprogram?

• 1:12:08Sarah Marshall?

  That's a good question, too. I might be editorializing a little bit, but I think I'm right. I think that it's, it's a bit, I don't know. It's, it's, well, I guess because it's they're doing a death allegory. And if the story was, once upon a time, there was a robot grandma and then nothing was ever sad about it, then it probably wouldn't be a very good Twilight Zone episode. But that's what I would like.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I'm gonna have to seek out that episode. Um, oh, okay. Now I remember. Third caveat is that, yeah, they're gonna cremate the body when they're done. Almost all programs cremate the body after they're done with them. So if you don't want your body to be cremated, you probably shouldn't donate your body because eventually it's gonna end up cremated. And then they'll usually send the ashes back to the family.

• 1:12:53Sarah Marshall?

  You know what? Okay, this is me really not thinking that I'm being relatable in this moment particularly, but just, I'm not saying this in the spirit of, you know how we all think this? Just to be clear.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Sarah Marshall?

  But to me, what's appealing about donating my body to the body farm is that I get to be nibbled on by creatures of the forest and to be returned to the earth in that way. And then if the rest of me is cremated, I think that's fine because I mainly would like to be nibbled. Does that make sense?

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  That does make sense. And I have good news for you, Sarah, because in that case, body donation is not your only option. You can be nibbled by going with green burial.

• 1:13:35Sarah Marshall?

  Ah, yes. Yeah.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  Green burial is another option that you have. In fact, it is legal in all 50 states. There's some differences, some key differences between green burial or natural burial, as it's sometimes called, and traditional burial. So in the case of green burial, you're buried three feet under for better decomposition, because there's, the microbes are better at that level for decomposition.

• 1:13:57Sarah Marshall?

  Which is also good advice for any aspiring criminals who are listening right now.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Yes, good to know. And it's also not so, or it's not so deep that it would affect the water table. And it is still deep enough that you will not be found by like large animals. Like nothing is going to dig you up.

• 1:14:14Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm. Unless you're in New Orleans or something, re-water table.

• 1:14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Sarah Marshall?

  I assume.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, that's obviously different. Yeah.

• 1:14:23Sarah Marshall?

  I just don't want any Louisiana criminals to be led astray and get caught because of our podcast. I couldn't possibly live with the guilt. Yeah.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  That's true. You know, we need to keep those Louisiana criminals in mind. You know, we need to be fair to them.

• 1:14:35Sarah Marshall?

  We need to do some handholding for them and no other demographics. Yeah. Okay, go on.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, burial in, in Louisiana is like a whole different thing with their above-ground graves, but we don't have time to go into that. Yeah, it's, it's amazing. Go to cemeteries in New Orleans. It's a lot of fun.

• 1:14:50Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  But anyway, green burial, you're buried three feet under, you're buried in a biodegradable shroud or box, like simple casket, something that has to biodegrade as it's under there.

• 1:15:01Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I'm very into all this, I think.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  And no embalming. So you can't be embalmed. Um, most cemeteries will do some version of this because it's worth pointing out that green burial is basically like traditional Jewish burial and a lot of Muslim burials are this type of burial. So most cemeteries will do some version of this, but that doesn't mean their other practices will be green. Like they might still use pesticides on the grass or whatever. You know what I mean? There are dedicated conservation cemeteries that are much more like nature preserves, where you can go and you'll be buried like in the earth and they'll let wild flowers grow over you or trees or like whatever is there will be growing over your body and it's really beautiful and you can go hiking there. I actually recently started volunteering

• 1:15:44Speaker 01

  at one. It's the first conservation cemetery here in Kentucky and it was started by the Loretto community of nuns and their co-members.

• 1:15:53Sarah Marshall?

  Nice.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. As like a way to support, originally it was just supposed to be for members of their community, but then they recently opened it up to the public. It's gorgeous. It's out, outside Bardstown, Kentucky. It's, it's in the woods. It's just stunning. It's worth noting that for, for green burial, the Green Burial Council is a good resource. If you're looking for a dedicated natural burial cemetery near you, you can find one through the Green Burial Council. And then another option that you have is sadly, you cannot be nibbled with this one, Sarah, but there is water cremation, also known as alkaline hydrolysis, is the fancy technical name. It is only legal in certain states, so it is not legal in every state. But in this case, the body is placed in basically a very

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  hot, hot tub. It's, it's placed in a chamber with very hot water and an alkaline solution. The soft tissues dissolve, which leaves the bones. And then they take those bones and grind them in a cremulator and present ashes to the family. It's exactly the same product as fire cremation.

• 1:16:54Sarah Marshall?

  Tell me what the, the selling points are for this one.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Okay, so it, it depends on the state, you know, where, right now it costs a little bit more money just because it's less common. So you might have to, if this is, if this is not legal in a state where you live, for example, it's not legal in Kentucky. There are no water cremation facilities in Kentucky. So if I wanted to have my body.

• 1:17:14Sarah Marshall?

  Got to draw a line somewhere.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. And apparently water cremation isn't. So I would have to, I would have to work with a funeral home to ship my body across state lines. I think North Carolina is a nearby place that does it. So I might ship my body there and have it cremated. So that would just add on to the cost. So it's a little, it's certainly more expensive than traditional fire cremation. However, it's a lot better for the environment than fire cremation because it takes a lot less energy to heat up water than it does to heat a cremation oven. In fact, firing up a cremation oven for a single cremation is the same as like a 500 mile car ride in terms of.

• 1:17:50Sarah Marshall?

  Wow.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Carbon being released into the atmosphere. It's really not good for the environment.

• 1:17:54Sarah Marshall?

  You know, I would love for there to be more kind of basic literacy about what the energy cost of various things are, you know, for that to be like one of the charts of the back of composition books. Cause like. I don't feel like I have any intuitive grasp on this kind of thing.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's hard to tell. It's like for someone who's not, you know, an expert on these things. It's like, well, why would heating up water take less energy than heating up an oven? Um, but yeah, so it's certainly more expensive than fire cremation, at least right now, until it becomes more common, but it's certainly better for the environment than fire cremation. Something that's kind of funny is that Indiana is the state where like one of the biggest companies that makes these alkaline hydrolysis chambers is like, so the factory that makes them is there, but it's illegal in Indiana. So they make the machines, but you can't actually water cremate someone in Indiana right now. Another thing that's kind of interesting about water cremation is that if you've had a pet cremated, it was probably done by water cremation.

• 1:18:53Sarah Marshall?

  Oh.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Because that's the most common way to cremate pets in the United States is with water cremation. It was only relatively recently that people were like, hey, what if we just did that with people?

• 1:19:01Sarah Marshall?

  Well, that's interesting.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then our, our last option is human composting or terramation. And yes, it is exactly like what you do with your food scraps in your backyard. Although there are some facilities which have techniques to speed up the process. And you're kind of in the hotbed for this, Sarah. The Pacific Northwest is where human composting really got its start.

• 1:19:28Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah, that's so us. We're innovative and also a bit lazy.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, it just seems like a bit crunchy. It seems like, ah, yes, the Pacific Northwest.

• 1:19:38Sarah Marshall?

  It is very crunchy, but also I like to think that we kept having bodies to deal with. And we were like, ah, throw it in the back. It'll be fine.

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, just put it out there.

• 1:19:45Sarah Marshall?

  Throw a bunch of pumpkins on there.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, I mean, you really could do that because the human body produces about a pickup truck bed's worth of compost.

• 1:19:54Sarah Marshall?

  Hey, that's a lot of compost.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:57Sarah Marshall?

  As someone who spent a shocking amount of money on soil and compost and soil enriching material, I am very, because isn't, isn't it sort of like a fun fact type thing to be like, you know, the minerals in your body are worth 87 cents or something. And it's like,

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:20:16Sarah Marshall?

  Well, apparently, apparently I'm very expensive in organic gardening terms. Makes me feel pretty good.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. You are.

• 1:20:24Sarah Marshall?

  I'm, I'm, I'm worth so much compost.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Think of all that could grow from your body.

• 1:20:31Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, tomatoes.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  You could grow tomatoes. Although I think that is going to be a debate we see in the future about like where this compost can be used because you know, people are going to get the ick about like eating fruit that grew from human composted compost, although like,

• 1:20:47Sarah Marshall?

  I have news for them about where all the other compost is coming from. But yeah, that is,

• 1:20:51Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:20:52Sarah Marshall?

  That is on another level. Yeah.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  Every time someone brings that up, I'm like, I have such bad news for you about every plot of land on earth ever.

• 1:21:00Sarah Marshall?

  Yes.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's becoming more widely available in different states. So I think it's legal. I, I'm not going to say the number. I think it's 13 states, but don't hold me to that. But even in some states that you wouldn't expect, like Georgia and Arizona, it's become legal. So I do think this is becoming more popular. And right now, again, like I would have to send my body across state lines to do this, but they usually, for human composting at least, usually include that in the cost. Like they include shipment of the body in the cost. So I think the last time I checked, it was around $7,000 to have human composting happen.

• 1:21:36Sarah Marshall?

  What do you think? What are your predictions, I guess?

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Well, the industry statistics, like from the funeral industry itself suggests that more and more people, almost 70% of consumers want something more environmentally friendly. And right now they're not being presented with those options very frequently. So I think that over the next couple of decades, as older funeral directors retire and newer people come into the industry, especially women, because that's another interesting statistic, is that most of the people in mortuary school right now are women and most of the retiring funeral directors are men. I think we're going to see a pretty big change in how this goes. And I think we're going to see green burial and water cremation and human composting become much more common. When people, you know, when I started, published my book and

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  started talking about this stuff, people always want to talk about green burial and human composting especially. I feel like they want to know more and more about it because they want to do something with their body where it is, you know, like you said earlier, going back to the earth. I think that's what people really want to do these days. And right now they aren't getting that option as much, but I think in the future we're going to see more and more people have access to those options.

• 1:22:45Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, which I find heartening because I, you know, not to say that it's an entirely rational desire, but it also isn't entirely rational to want to be disposed of according to technologies we invented because of the civil war, you know, so why not have multiple irrational options?

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. You know, and ultimately I think you should have whatever kind of death you want. If you want to be embalmed and you want to have an open casket funeral and you want to do that, that's fine. Like live your best life, live your best death, die your best death. I don't know how we should say that, but you should do what you want. But I think it's, most people don't know that they have all of these options, both in terms of what to do with their money and even what to do with their bodies. You're not limited to what you think you're limited to.

• 1:23:29Sarah Marshall?

  Right. And it does seem like there's been a history of shadiness in terms of keeping people from understanding what all of their options are, because maybe the funeral industry historically has been able to make more money by keeping consumers in the dark. I mean, is that fair to say?

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that is fair to say. And then I also think that's not unique to the funeral industry. It's like a lot of other industries.

• 1:23:49Sarah Marshall?

  Right. It's a cornerstone of our, our whole economy, I guess.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  Right. It's the most American thing you could do is keep information from people so that you could make more money.

• 1:24:00Sarah Marshall?

  Especially women.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yes, yes. Because of course, women are making a lot of these arrangements. Um, but yeah, I think that that's absolutely true, that the, you know, for better or worse, the funeral industry has done things a certain way for a very long time. It's hard to make change in an industry like that, in any industry that's done things the same way for a long, long time. You know, it's not like a scrappy little new company that's coming in to shake things up. Not that those companies are necessarily good either all the time, but you know, it's hard for them to make changes. They don't see why they should make changes when what they're doing works in terms of making the money. So I think it's unfortunately kind of up to consumers. One of my friends and I were joking the other day that by losing

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  our parents at a young age, we've like accidentally become industry watchdogs. And we're like, because we're here like doing this, it's like, oh, we're, we're the ones who have to tell everybody that there are things they have to know about their consumer rights.

• 1:24:57Sarah Marshall?

  Well, it's a very superhero kind of an arc.

• 1:24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Sarah Marshall?

  When you think of it that way.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  I guess so. Yeah.

• 1:25:04Sarah Marshall?

  Do you have any words of advice for someone who's listening to this, you know, next to a, a dead person?

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I'm sorry. Like, I know that's a, let me be the first to say it. I'm sorry for your loss. And you can do this because you have to and because everyone gets through it. So even if it doesn't seem like it right now, you are going to get through it. And you have other people you can talk to. Take advantage, you know, if your loved one died in hospice, take advantage of the grief resources through that hospice. Feel free to tell your friends what you need. Don't feel like you're going to be a burden on them. You know, if you need someone to walk the dog, if you need someone to pick up groceries, it shouldn't be your job to figure all that out. You know, they are not going to suffer if they have to pick up groceries for you. So make sure you're leaning on your

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  support network and make sure you prioritize yourself and your needs because you're still alive. So as much as you want to honor this person who you loved, maybe, maybe you didn't, but you know, as much as you want to take care of this person in their death, make sure you prioritize your own needs because you are the one who is still alive and you're going to have, you're the one who's going to have to keep going on. So make sure you're taking care of yourself.

• 1:26:18Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. Well, and I, I have two pieces of advice, and I think they're actually, they're good for everybody, but especially extra. So in this case, which is drink water and don't text your ex.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's just, that's not in, in just in the case of a death. That's always advice.

• 1:26:34Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Drink water.

• 1:26:35Sarah Marshall?

  Every day.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 1:26:37Sarah Marshall?

  Drink water. Don't text your ex.

• 1:26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. 100%.

• 1:26:44Sarah Marshall?

  Tell us again, what is, what is your book called?

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, my book is My Parents Are Dead. What Now? A Panic-Free Guide to the Practicalities of Death. You can buy it wherever you get books and you can buy an audiobook of it, read by me, and you can get an ebook of it. You can get it in all book forms. You can also find me on social media. I'm at DeadParentsWhatNow, just to keep things easy. And I recently started a podcast of dubious sound quality called Bitching and Mourning. I started it with my friend Alison Zeidman. She is an Emmy nominated comedy writer who also lost both her parents. So we publish episodes biweekly and we got in the anger phase of grief and stayed there. So it's a fun podcast. I, I think you, I think you should listen, but that's up to you.

• 1:27:30Sarah Marshall?

  Good. Yeah, it's a, we're a rebellious group around here. We don't like to be told what to do.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  No, no, I would never want to force a podcast upon you. But if you're looking for something to listen to and you, and you're not sick of talking about death already, you can go over there.

• 1:27:46Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. If you in fact would like to talk about death for many more hours, which I suspect is very true for a lot of people, then that's where you can find that and more Becky. Thank you so much for coming on and talking to me about all this. I, I feel much better educated myself. And this is sort of, it's one of those things like sort of, you know, oh my God, take a CPR class where it's like, it's something that you want to learn, but you're put off by, if you're me, by the superstitious belief that if you don't prepare for it, it will never happen.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:20Sarah Marshall?

  And so sometimes I have to just, just be able to learn in a way that feels safer than Googling the answers to all these things and trying to think of these questions to begin with. So thank you for, thank you for coming on here today and for all the work that you're doing too.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad I could be here to have a cozy conversation with death about you so you know your rights and your options. And it's just a real honor to be here. This has been lovely.

• 1:28:49Sarah Marshall?

  Thank you. Yeah. And thank you to death for being here.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Yes. Thank you to death. You shall be maligned no more if it's up to us.

• 1:28:59Sarah Marshall?

  No, never again after this. Yeah.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  We will rehabilitate your reputation.

• 1:29:03Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, you know what? It's, it's time. Somebody had to do it. I'm glad it was us.

• 1:29:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:29:19Sarah Marshall?

  And that is our episode. Thank you to the people who helped make this show. Miranda Zickler is our producer and editor, and Nicole Ortiz is our administrative assistant. We'll see you in two weeks.